The American Spectator - The Missile Defense Spectatorhttp://spectator.org/department/missile-defense-spectator
enThe Hero of Star Warshttp://spectator.org/articles/55735/hero-star-wars
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/article_page/s3/13663407512692.jpg?itok=IM7qHKoq" width="658" height="374" /></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Last month the 30th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s missile defense idea, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), often then called “Star Wars,” passed by fairly quietly. He unveiled it in a relatively brief speech to the nation on March 23, 1983. It was loudly denounced then and for years by the Left as a supposed acceleration of the arms race and a “militarization of the heavens.”</p> <p>At the time the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was considered sacrosanct, and the cult of arms control firmly rejected any U.S. defense against incoming missiles, leaving no protection against even potentially accidentally launched missiles. That cult preferred continued reliance upon Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), largely crafted during the 1960s under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. </p> <p>Reagan naturally regarded MAD as morally problematic and, although he might dream of a nuclear-free world, he realistically was not willing to place his faith in that dream. Instead, on March 23, 1983, Reagan succinctly asked: “Wouldn’t it be better to save lives than to avenge them?” He went on: “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?” And he called upon the “scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”</p> <p>At the 1986 Reykjavik, Iceland summit, Reagan famously walked away from a potentially sweeping arms control agreement with the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev insisted on America’s renouncing missile defense. It was a portrayed as a setback for Reagan. But in fact, his refusal to retreat led not only to an arms control treaty but more importantly helped to ensure Gorbachev’s and the Soviet Union’s demise. As some Soviet officials later admitted, the Soviet Union could not ultimately compete technologically with the U.S. in missile defense technology.</p> <p>The ABM Treaty remained in place until 2001, when President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from it, prompting perfunctory criticism from the Russians but not much else. Rudimentary missile defenses have been deployed. North Korea’s latest threats have prompted the Obama administration to announce plans for deploying a system in the Pacific.</p> <p>It was never entirely clear why the left preferred complete vulnerability to missile attack. The Religious Left in the 1980s, fully committed not only to the Soviet-supported Nuclear Freeze Movement’s attempt to forestall U.S. missile upgrades in Europe but also to the arms control cult, firmly rejected any missile defense. After the Reykjavik Summit, the then still meaningful National Council of Churches (NCC) condemned Reagan for his refusal to abandon his “Star Wars/SDI dream,” which was the “obstacle which dimmed the bright hopes for serious arms reduction.” It also speculated that the Soviets could match SDI with their own system, that SDI would be prohibitively expensive, and that “many scientists even doubt” that SDI was “technically achievable.”</p> <p>The NCC’s board had earlier heard testimony from United Methodist ethicist Alan Geyer of Wesley Seminary, who suggested stopping SDI could “become the number one social justice issue on the churches’ agenda.” He also warned that missile defense for the U.S. “could prove a cover for a first strike.” Shortly before, the United Methodist Council of Bishops issued its “In Defense of Creation” manifesto rejecting both nuclear deterrence and missile defense. After Reykjavik, one Methodist bishop bemoaned that Reagan had lost the “most sweeping arms reduction agreement since Hiroshima” because of “misplaced confidence in a defense system.”</p> <p>In the mid-1980s I was a college student interning at High Frontier, a proponent of missile defense founded by former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. General Daniel Graham (USA-Ret.). For High Frontier, Reagan’s March 23, 1983 speech had been a virtual holy day. <em>Star Wars</em> movie creator George Lucas unsuccessfully litigated against High Frontier for gleefully embracing what critics had already popularized as a term of derision. General Graham liked calling missile defense “Star Wars” because it recalled that the good guys defeated Darth Vader’s “Empire.” In 1985, I walked up the street from our office in Washington, D.C. to Foundry United Methodist Church to hear the United Methodist Council of Bishops’ hearings on their impending nuclear manifesto. On that particular day, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Robert Rankin, Jr., a Methodist, was testifying in defense of SDI for “deterring aggression and increasing the security of the United States and its allies.” His appeal was for naught. The General Conference of the United Methodist Church in1988 and in subsequent years denounced missile defense. Even in 2001, after President Bush, who was himself Methodist, abrogated the ABM Treaty, the Council of Bishops unanimously criticized his commitment to missile defense as “illusory,” “unnecessary,” and “wasteful.”</p> <p>In more recent years, liberal evangelicals have urged nuclear disarmament but are typically silent about or critical of missile defense. The National Association of Evangelicals in 2011 urged nuclear disarmament without mentioning missile defense. In the 1980s, some prominent religious conservatives defended Reagan’s SDI as a moral imperative. But few evangelical or other religious activists on the conservative side today directly address national security. They likely are modestly recognizing the limits of their vocation and expertise, boundaries that the Religious Left does not typically observe.</p> <p>Reagan profoundly understood that the state’s supreme duty is to defend its people. The balance of terror under MAD to him was morally and politically untenable. SDI offered a pathway that was ethically and strategically superior. He likely did not fully expect its ultimate psychological impact on the implosion of the Soviet Union. Thanks to political inertia, 20 years passed before ABM was finally allowed to die. Even 12 years later, the U.S. lacks a comprehensive defense against missile attack. But at least there is incremental progress, with the Obama administration’s last move in the Pacific further vindicating Reagan’s vision and discrediting skeptics who preferred blind faith in arms control or permanent vulnerability to the threat of mass destruction.</p> <p><em>﻿Photo: Wikimedia Commons</em></p> </div></div></div>Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:07:00 +0000admin55735 at http://spectator.orgJoe Biden's Warhttp://spectator.org/articles/55923/joe-bidens-war
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/article_page/s3/13638211788529.jpg?itok=8MgcIP2D" width="658" height="374" /></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em>“The president’s continued adherence to [SDI] constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”<br /></em>-- <strong>Senator Joseph Biden on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, designed to protect against nuclear attacks from nuclear armed enemies like North Korea</strong></p> <p><em>“Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the U.S. will add 14 interceptors to the 30 in its missile defense system by fiscal 2017, sending a signal to North Korea after the totalitarian regime threatened nuclear strikes.”</em><br /><strong>-- <em><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-15/hagel-to-make-missile-defense-announcement-pentagon-says"> Bloomberg Business Week</a></em> on the Obama-Biden Administration decision to belatedly deploy an underdeveloped SDI against a potential North Korean attack</strong></p> <p>Joe Biden had a headache.</p> <p>And, alas, that’s what’s always remembered.</p> <p>Now, America has a headache. A big one, too.</p> <p>That would be the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea.</p> <p>Back in the wayback of March, 1987, Senator Joe Biden was busy running for president. What’s remembered, aside from his plagiarism problem, was that the young Senator was in the middle of a speech to a New Hampshire Rotary Club audience in Nashua when he was stricken with a shooting pain in his neck and had to stop in the middle of his speech. After a time-out, overcoming a feeling of nausea, the Senator returned to the podium and with difficulty finished his speech. It turned out that Biden had suffered from an aneurism, which he would need surgery to fix.</p> <p>The surgery was successful, the rest of the Biden story to date is known as the now-vice president sits as the number two in an Obama Administration that is today coming to grips with the actual threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea.</p> <p>Which is to say: North Korea nukes Hollywood. And potentially a bit of California or the rest of the West Coast.</p> <p>What’s forgotten in the tale of Biden’s aneurism-induced headache was the topic of his speech that winter day in Nashua:</p> <p>An attack on the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative.</p> <p>Or, as Biden and his fellow liberals of the day disparaged the President’s idea of defending the United States by hitting a missile with a missile – Star Wars.</p> <p> March 23 of this year – two days from now – marks the 30th anniversary of President Reagan’s <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/03/president-reagans-strategic-defense-initiative-proposal-25-years-later-a-better-path-chosen"> historic speech</a> announcing his intention to pursue a “Strategic Defense Initiative.”</p> <p>As the Heritage Foundation noted five years ago on the occasion of SDI’s 25th anniversary, Reagan had three core principles at the heart of SDI.</p> <ul><li>·<strong>Principle #1: Refuse to accept U.S. vulnerability.</strong></li> <li>·<strong>Principle #2: Operate from a position of strength.</strong></li> <li>·<strong>Principle #3: Recognize that the U.S. will never be secure if its enemies are able to use space as an avenue for attack.</strong></li> </ul><p>Said Reagan in announcing his idea:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>“</em>We are launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history.”</p> </blockquote> <p>Indeed. Which is precisely what infuriated Biden and his liberal allies.</p> <p>What so offended Biden was that Reagan was making a direct challenge to the liberal sacred cow that was nuclear deterrence doctrine – mutual assured destruction. Or MAD as its appropriate acronym had it. In short, the liberal idea – the conventional wisdom of the day – was “if you kill us you will die too.”</p> <p>Reagan was appalled at this thinking – and had no hesitation in challenging the conventional wisdom. It is hard to realize now how much the idea of “arms control” had essentially developed into a liberal religion, its practitioners considered more priests than bureaucrats.</p> <p>As history now records, SDI became a central player in ending the Cold War. It was SDI that brought the Reykjavik Reagan-Gorbachev summit to an abrupt end as Gorbachev sought to effectively end the program. Reagan would have none of it, and walked out rather than be pressured to stop SDI.</p> <p>None of this impressed Biden, although he was shown to be demonstrably wrong. Thus his opposition to the program continued through the years.</p> <p>By the time George W. Bush arrived in the White House to keep SDI moving, Biden was still doing his best to thwart the program.</p> <p>As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Biden called a July 24, 2001 hearing on a Bush budget request for $8 billion in SDI research.</p> <p>Biden made plain his opposition, opening the hearing with a reference to a <em>Wall Street Journal</em> editorial on SDI that referred to Biden as “Dr. No.”</p> <p>The then-Senator immediately raised the Bush administration’s specific insistence that at some point in the future North Korea could have a nuclear missile and threaten to use it against America.</p> <p>Biden ridiculed the very notion of this possibility. He was nothing if not an avid believer in the sanctity of the arms control priesthood. To push forward SDI was an attack on arms control, said Biden and he would have none of it.</p> <p>Scorned the future vice president:</p> <blockquote> <p>The threat has variously been described as a crude missile threat by a rogue state…. The threat has variously been described as a crude missile threat from North Korea, Iraq, or Iran, the risk of an accidental launch of a sophisticated Russian ICBM, or of the danger posed by missiles which might menace U.S. forces deployed on the Korean Peninsula, or some other hot spot around the world….. It seems to me that answering the “why” question on missile defense requires a discussion not only of the threats, but how real they are, how damaging to U.S. interests they are, how immediate they are, and also the alternatives available to meet those threats. …</p> <p>Have we seriously explored a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s development of and</p> <p>export of long-range missiles? For if there were no immediate possibility of North Korea having the capacity to launch a long-range missile to strike the United States, there would be no need to initiate a test program that in the minds of some experts is of questionable utility and costs billions of dollars…</p> </blockquote> <p>Got that?</p> <p>North Korea should be dealt with by “a diplomatic solution” because the very idea of North Korea attacking the U.S. with a nuclear missile wasn’t “real.”</p> <p>So it came as no surprise that in 2012 as Vice President Biden, the eternal Senate critic of SDI was presiding with President Obama over requested SDI <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76453.html">budget cuts</a> to the tune of $810 million in 2013 with projected cuts of $3.6 billion over the next five years.</p> <p>Then… then… with all the predictability of the sun rising in the East, the North Korean threat Biden insisted wasn’t there suddenly appears.</p> <p>So, of course, the Obama-Biden administration is now in a mad scramble.</p> <p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/15/us/north-korea-missile-defense/index.html"> Reports</a> CNN:</p> <blockquote> <p>The United States will deploy additional ground-based missile interceptors on the West Coast as part of efforts to enhance the nation's ability to defend itself from attack by North Korea, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Friday.</p> <p>Still relatively new in his post, the Pentagon chief told reporters that 14 additional interceptors to be installed by 2017 would bring the total to 44. It is part of a package of steps expected to cost $1 billion, officials said.</p> <p>“The reason that we are doing what we are doing and the reason we are advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat and to assure any contingency,” Hagel said.</p> <p>… Part of the move announced by Hagel would involve reopening a missile field at Fort Greely, Alaska.</p> <p>In 2011, the Pentagon mothballed Missile Field 1, acting on direction from the Obama administration. Instead of permanently decommissioning it, the Defense Missile Agency placed it in a non-operational state.”</p> </blockquote> <p>So this defense will be in place “by 2017.” Which is to say four years from now.</p> <p>And say again, Secretary Hagel, why is this suddenly urgent $1 billion infusion into missile defense needed? Why was the missile field in Alaska being reopened – after being “mothballed” by a Pentagon “acting on direction from the Obama administration”?</p> <blockquote> <p>"The reason that we are doing what we are doing and the reason we are advancing our program here for homeland security is to not take any chances, is to stay ahead of the threat…"</p> </blockquote> <p>A threat? From North Korea? But how could this be? What happened to those diplomatic efforts then-Senator Biden said would defuse North Korea? If the VP wants to take some non-sequestered travel, why isn’t he in Pyongyang hanging out with Kim Jong-un instead of Dennis Rodman?</p> <p>When one cuts to the chase here, what’s at play is the liberal mindset on national security issues. There is nothing new with Biden – or the now highly predictable results of his lack of common sense about the threats to the United States and how to deal with them.</p> <p>Biden’s record as a senator included his support for the nuclear freeze, cutting off funding for the Vietnam War (launching the infamous killing fields of Cambodia and the murderous overtaking of South Vietnam by the North), opposing the first Gulf War in 1991 and so on… and so on… and so on.</p> <p>Now, as the sitting Vice President of the United States, the irony is that the Biden chickens are coming home to roost. North Korea is in fact threatening America with nuclear missiles, and now the U.S. government has to scramble to reverse the damage done to American missile defense done by Biden’s work.</p> <p>Will there be a war with North Korea? Will Californians and others on the West Coast suddenly find themselves watching their televisions and computers in horrified fashion as a North Korean missile flies towards them, making of Hollywood or San Francisco the new Israel? Their citizens nervously scanning the sky for incoming?</p> <p>We will see.</p> <p>But if in fact this scenario plays itself out, it’s safe to say that whatever else follows will have a name:</p> <p>Biden’s War.</p> <p><em>Photo: UPI ("Vice President Joe Biden Visits the USS Ronald Reagan"; May 16, 2009)</em></p> </div></div></div>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:09:00 +0000admin55923 at http://spectator.orgThe Silent Threathttp://spectator.org/articles/34752/silent-threat
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/article_page/s3/13481630341133.jpg?itok=noAJaAOg" width="658" height="374" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Riots over the Middle East and South Asia get everyone's attention, but a clear and present danger to the United States homeland exists that virtually no one is talking about and for which we have no defense: missile attack.</p> <p>A Russian military officials says the recent covert visit of one of their submarines to the Gulf of Mexico proves that they could, without difficulty, launch a missile high over the U.S. that could trigger the explosion of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) bomb that would shut down virtually all electrical and electronic activity in a large swath of the nation. There would be no radiation, no deaths -- "only" economic paralysis and chaos.</p> <p>Add Iran and North Korea to the list of potential launchers of such a weapon. </p> <p>While we have worked for months to develop missile defense capabilities in Europe to protect against a possible Iranian attack there, we have only tested such systems from bases in California and Alaska. Nothing is ready to deploy and given the threat of "sequestration" of large amounts of defense funds, that situation is unlikely to change.</p> <p>While Congress and the Administration stew and stall over the sequestration issue, the danger is both clear and present and there is something we can do to protect the U.S. homeland from such attacks. It is called the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netter Sensor. That mouthful is shortened to JLENS.</p> <p>The Army developed JLENS to detect, identify, track and engage multiple hostile targets, including low-flying cruise missiles, as well as those launched from submarines and merchant vessels. The threat is that such attacks might involve EMP, chemical or biological weapons. </p> <p>JLENS is deceptively simple, consisting of two lighter-than-air ships that lift to 10,000 feet (or more) both a fire-control and surveillance radar from where they detect potentially hostile targets at ranges of more than 200 miles. It gives field commanders considerable advance warning of threats. The system was tested successfully last April at the Utah Test and Training Range, destroying a simulated hostile cruise missile with a Patriot missile.</p> <p>Development of JLENS has involved an investment of $2 billion so far. The next step is to answer requests from combat commands for this system by testing it again in the field to fine-tune it. Congress appropriated $40.3 million for such a test; however, before it could be conducted, the Department of Defense asked Congress to allow these funds to be reprogrammed for other purposes, presumably including budget balancing in the face of sequestration. </p> <p>Since its creation in the 1950s, the Committee on the Present Danger has focused on the changing nature of threats to the United States. With the potential threat to the U.S. homeland increasing daily, the Committee <a href="http://www.committeeonthepresentdanger.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=2758&amp;catid=4&amp;Itemid=92"> has written to the Secretary of Defense</a> to urge him to withdraw the request to reprogram the funds so that development of JLENS can proceed. Its cost, in the greater scheme of things, is low when measured against the nature and growth of the threat to our homeland. </p> <p><strong><em>Mr. Hannaford is member of the board of directors of the Committee on the Present Danger.</em></strong></p> </div></div></div>Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:07:00 +0000admin34752 at http://spectator.orgCompromise Without Compromisinghttp://spectator.org/articles/35713/compromise-without-compromising
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/article_page/s3/13343492149399.jpg?itok=5UrWTm09" width="658" height="374" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>It's about to get hot in Washington, D.C. -- and that's not just because we're getting closer to the start of pool season. With lawmakers returning from their Easter break to tackle the FY 2013 budget, the fight over our nation's fiscal future is entering the next round. </p> <p>In a departure from previous years, defense spending -- an area that has in the past largely escaped fiscal scrutiny -- has entered the national discourse. Against the backdrop of unprecedented and unsustainable government spending levels, fiscal responsibility warrants that no area of the budget should be off limits; even more so, as it is a well-documented fact that the Department of Defense (DoD), whose budget has dramatically increased since 1998, is plagued with a history of cost overruns and wasteful spending.</p> <p>Due to the critical nature of DoD's mission and the parochial nature of defense spending, however, striking the precarious balance between appropriate levels of service and fiscal prudence in the realm of defense is a particularly delicate matter. Recent international developments -- among them increased hostility on the part of Iran, which <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/207275-panetta-iran-could-have-nuclear-weapons-delivery-vehicles-in-2-3-years"> Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta states</a> may be only two or three years away from nuclear action against the U.S. -- make navigating these waters an even more delicate task.</p> <p>As a recent <a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2012/55_favor_creation_of_u_s_anti_missile_system"> Rasmussen poll</a> shows, a majority of Americans believe that a missile attack on the U.S. is likely to occur in the near future, and favor the installation of a U.S. anti-missile defense system, which certainly carries a hefty price tag.</p> <p>However, action taken by Congress last year shows that even in the defense budget, finding compromise without compromising is possible -- or, as Mark Pfeifle, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications and Global Outreach, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-pfeifle/senate-hits-the-mark-on-m_b_1152606.html"> phrased it</a>: "if recent events serve as a blueprint, Congress has some guidance in how it can achieve the necessary spending cuts without sacrificing the missile shield that is needed to protect our national security."</p> <p>At present, our regional missile defenses center on the Aegis weapons system, a comprehensive ship-based platform operated by the U.S. Navy. It is responsible for tracking, intercepting, and destroying targets ranging from aircraft to ships and ballistic and cruise missiles. As part of a U.S. and NATO-supported "Phased Adaptive Approach," the Aegis system currently relies on the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) version "Block IA."</p> <p>This missile constitutes the first of four planned phases of increasingly complex missile development, the overall conclusion of which will extend to protecting the U.S. homeland into the 2020s. While stage three of the program, centered on a variant called SM-3 Block IIA, is a non-controversial co-development effort between the U.S. and Japan to be completed by 2018, a funding controversy is brewing over the other two variants: the SM-3 Block IB, which is on track for deployment in 2015, and the SM-3 Block IIB, which at this point is not even fully conceptualized, and would by no means be operational before 2020.</p> <p>Conscious of the evolving nature of external threats -- including Iran's saber-rattling, which may put our defenses to the test sooner than anyone would hope -- while at the same time acknowledging our dire fiscal straits, Congress last year decided that we need to focus on first things first, and struck funding for the development of the futuristic SM-3 Block IIB.</p> <p>Instead, it applied those funds towards the production of the SM-3 Block IB, a move supported by <a href="http://cnsnews.com/blog/randy-duncan/confronting-iranian-nuclear-threat"> military experts</a> and <a href="http://www.ntu.org/news-and-issues/defense/ntu-supports-sm-3-decision.html"> fiscal watchdogs</a> alike -- for good reasons. This next SM-3 variant builds on the successful technology of Block IA, which has been on time and on budget, while outperforming expectations on various occasions. Block IA has a proven track record to take out ballistic missiles, including intermediate range missiles. With increased capabilities, including better target discrimination, <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/improving-aegis-ballistic-missile-defense-command-and-control"> experts say</a> the SM-3 Block IB will even be able to counter both long-range missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2015 -- a welcome and timely development Americans overwhelming support.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the President's FY 2013 budget ignores the wishes of Congress and the American people and reinstates funding for the "PowerPoint" SM-3 Block IIB missile program, while slashing resources for the completion of the next logical phase in our missile defense system -- the Block IB missile.</p> <p>As the budget fight heats up, Congress should correct this mistake. Funding experimental projects rather than focusing limited fiscal resources on proven technologies to counter near-term threats is not only akin to putting the cart before the proverbial horse -- it is a potentially dangerous gamble we as taxpayers, and as a nation, cannot afford to take.</p> </div></div></div>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:07:00 +0000admin35713 at http://spectator.orgAt Sea on an Aegis Destroyerhttp://spectator.org/articles/38802/sea-aegis-destroyer
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>The attack, when it came, developed fast.</p> <p>The left-hand radar screen was displaying the coast of China; the right one, our own ship offshore, near Taiwan. Suddenly a streak rose from the launch area on the left, inland from the coast, on which our radar was focused.</p> <p>"Here it comes," said the skipper, as the streak soared up in an arc, bending to the right, toward the sea.</p> <p>We were sitting in the combat information center, called "Combat," deep inside a ballistic missile defense (BMD) destroyer. Although conceptually we were positioned in the Pacific, actually we were under way off the east coast of the U.S. Down in the dimly lit environment of Combat it made little difference as we gazed at the huge, brightly colored radar screens and watched the attack unfold.</p> <p>Combat contains some 50 consoles, many displaying changing columns of figures, which tell you how an attack, and the ship's response, are progressing. Some 20 officers and enlisted personnel sit before these consoles, most with dozens of switches and buttons. Not all relate to the BMD functions. Other sections of Combat cope with defending the ship itself against surface, air, and underwater attack, and also with launching Tomahawk missiles against land targets and hostile ships. Land attack is under Washington's, not the ship's, control, and is thus highly secret, secluded in a corner.</p> <p>As we watched, the attacking missile's rise was both plotted on the radar and described numerically on consoles. In this exercise it rose to 400,000 feet before starting its descent toward Hawaii. (You can calculate the target only after the boost phase.) After some minutes an interceptor missile rose from our ship and duly crashed into the attacking missile, which vanished from the radar display and from the numbers on the consoles. It had taken our missile about a minute and a half, traveling at about Mach 20, to climb up and make its "kinetic" or collision interception.</p> <p>The Aegis system that performed this astonishing feat is called the SM (for standard missile)-3. This whole operation was an exercise, conceptual, but the real thing would have looked the same, down there in the somber precincts of Combat. It all happens so fast that the decisionsdetecting the attacking missile's launch, calculating its trajectory, generating the firing solution, and launching the shipboard SM-3 missile to interceptare made at lightning speed by computers, not by the destroyer's commander, who could not possibly decide fast enough. So you put the necessary general instructions and specific intelligence into the vast "SPY 1B" radar system and the SM-3's program, and then sit back and watch things unfold. These days the real-life SM-3 almost invariably hits an incoming missile. You do need a good idea of the launch sites, which one trusts will be available from our satellite monitors.</p> <p>Whoops! The radar displays a foreign warship launching an attack on our destroyer. The captain turns to the tactical action officer, who manages fighting, sitting next to him on the right. "Kill ship," is all he says. The officer instantly transmits the word to the surface warfare coordinator and thence to the five-inch gun on deck, which rapidly fires five shells at the attacking ship. It vanishes in turn.</p> <p>As usual, there is the measures-countermeasures alternation. A recent, somewhat hostile study in <em>Arms Control Today</em> claimed that the SM-3's missile often hits the rocket body instead of the warhead. That should throw the incoming warhead off its track, however. The study also points out the -problem of differentiating between incoming missiles and decoys, and coping with countermeasures the attacking missile could deploy. I was told that these problems will be solved.</p> <p>An attacking aircraft would get much the same treatment from the two astonishing Phalanx Gatling guns on deck, which have their own self-correcting radar control and, bobbing about as the target direction varies, pour an almost solid stream of tungsten shells into the plane or missile.</p> <p>Destroyers were originally built to sink sub-marines and, in some heroic situations, to fire torpedoes at larger ships, and they still have that capability, although it has been largely assigned to attack subs and torpedo boats. A BMD ship's main duty is thus shooting down ballistic missiles with the interception missiles it has on board. There are 61 of them, about 33 feet long, stored in 20 square-topped vertical "cells" under the foredeck and 61 under the afterdeck. (An Aegis cruiser, somewhat larger than a destroyer, has the same radar and missile system, but with 61 cells under the foredeck and 61 more aft. It also has two five-inch guns rather than the destroyer's one.)</p> <p>A DDG multi-mission destroyer is 505 feet in overall length and when fully manned has "racks" for 350 sailors, including a handful of women officers and several dozen women enlisted personnel. The bridge is 56 feet up, and the masthead 154 feet. In addition to the ballistic missile exercises there are periodic man overboard and similar drills. (The symbolic victim carries an "O" flag and is thus called "Oscar"). Recovery takes several minutes, while the ship maneuvers to windward of the victim to create a lee, for easier recovery. Falling into the drink in the North Atlantic in cold weather is a very poor idea. Other drills involve the whole ship, such as its being hit conceptually by enemy fire, resulting in a conflagration on board and human casualties. Not much can happen in real combat that has not been simulated many, many times.</p> <p>A yachtsman out on a destroyer is struck by the sight of our old "Don't Tread on Me" ensign on the bow until the ship gets under way, and by a -helmeted SCAT (Small Craft Action Team) with 762 mm machine guns on each flying bridge to fend off hostile small craft. Also, to reduce ambiguity, one says, "Come Right" (as distinct from starboard) although it's still the starboard beam.</p> <p>The ship's displacement is 8,800 tons, and its engines put out 10,000 horsepower. All over its interior, at every operating station, there are two- to three-inch-thick manuals describing what must be done.</p> <p>WHAT LIES AHEAD? The missile component of the Aegis system the SM-3 is entering service in improved versions as testing and research evolve under a 10-year "Phased Adaptive Approach." There are 30-some at sea already, including the entire Arleigh Burke-class of destroyers and three Ticonderoga-class cruisers.</p> <p>Phase one, being deployed by next year, should be able to defend an area comparable in size to that between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.</p> <p>Phase two, to be deployed around 2015, and perhaps including airborne sensors, would defend an area at least three times larger.</p> <p>Phase three, around 2018, should defend an area equivalent to all of Europe.</p> <p>Phase four, around 2020, should provide boost-phase intercept capabilities for ICBMs targeting the United States.</p> <p>The actual achievement of an important part of the "Star Wars" program has come about without general public awareness. The crux of the matter is that the program really does perform, almost infallibly, at a current cost of somewhat less than $2 billion a year. There are still limitations, which should be worked out in the successive phases. Right now, the biggest is that you need adequate information on where an impending launch is coming from. Satellite surveillance and other intelligence must provide this. Later on there will be airborne sensors, with wider systems to come.</p> <p>The theory of ballistic missile defense is not to provide a perfect shield, but to degrade an attack to the point where it becomes unprofitable, as our riposte will infallibly ruin the attacking country. Since our situation with Russia has become more or less stable, we have had an understanding with them against -ballistic missile defense, but not against the inter-mediate range missiles that Iran, for instance, might deploy. If Iran develops an intercontinental capability, the Aegis can be adapted to protect against that. Our sea-based interceptors will be harder to knock out than land-based installations in Central Europe.</p> <p>We are sharing the Aegis with Japan and Israel, both of which operate the system successfully. Other countries are scheduled to follow. Let us hope that this prodigious weapon discourages some unstable states from bothering to develop an attacking capability, quite aside from using it. </p> </div></div></div>Sat, 09 Oct 2010 14:55:00 +0000admin38802 at http://spectator.org